


Stehe Still (be quiet)

by puella_nerdii



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Missing Scene, Queer Themes, Spoilers, just plain issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-02
Updated: 2013-07-02
Packaged: 2017-12-16 20:13:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/866143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puella_nerdii/pseuds/puella_nerdii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Who's Reiner trying to fool? Berthold doesn't know. (Spoilers through manga chapter 46, takes place during training days.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stehe Still (be quiet)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Mithrigil for the title (and double meaning therein).

“Thanks,” Reiner mumbles when Krista ties off the bandage on his arm. His ears tinge red, and his grin is flustered. It’s the third time this week that he’s done something like this.

It’s not Berthold’s place to criticize him, exactly. The others, Reiner included, have teased him enough about how easily his face turns red, how he’ll never hold onto his blades for long if his palms keep sweating so much. What grounds does he have to object, if Reiner’s displaying a milder version of the same thing? So Berthold looks at his plate, and hears Reiner shift on the bench next to him, and doesn’t say anything.

“Looks like _someone’s_ got a crush,” Jean says.

Reiner’s laugh is a little high, a little forced. Berthold wonders if anyone else notices. “We’re not all like you, Jean,” he says, at the same time that Krista says, “Eh?”

The conversation switches to whether or not Jean tried to pull off a difficult hairpin turn in training today because he thought Mikasa was watching, and whether it was worth him slamming into a tree afterwards. Reiner’s laugh gets louder, stronger, more like --

No. It _isn’t_ like him.

“Excuse me,” Berthold says, barely audible over Eren’s and Jean’s rising voices, and starts to carry his plate away.

Reiner catches his arm before he gets far. “Everything okay?” he asks. His grip is steady, welcoming. Even though his brows are furrowed, his little half-smile softens the effect.

Berthold’s palms twitch. “I’m not hungry, that’s all.”

“You sure? You took a pretty nasty dive during afternoon drills.”

“No, it’s fine. I’m all right.”

“Hey -- ”

“Reiner,” he says, as low as he dares. Heat crawls up the back of his neck. Why does Reiner’s voice have to carry so much? Mikasa stops hovering over Eren long enough to glance at the two of them, Connie twists around in his seat, and Krista opens and closes her mouth like she’s trying to push words out but can’t quite. _Just let this go_ , Berthold thinks.

“Okay,” Reiner says, but doesn’t release Berthold’s arm and doesn’t stop frowning. “We’ll talk later.”

Later, as it turns out, is at least two hours after Berthold returns to his bunk. The trainees are supposed to return to their barracks immediately after dinner. As long as you don’t fall asleep during morning assembly, though, the officers aren’t likely to know if you’ve sneaked away. Besides, it isn’t as though there’s anywhere to sneak off to, out here. Berthold doesn’t think so, at least. But he hasn’t thought about it much. It’s Reiner who arranges night training sessions with Eren, Reiner who scouts the forest around the camp, Reiner who comes up with ways to cover any necessary absences.

He’s probably setting _something_ up now, not that he’s breathed a word to Berthold about what it is. He probably thinks Berthold won’t like it. It’s not a good reason to keep silent, but it’s the only explanation coming to mind.

Berthold picks up one of the books he brought with him -- he’s only read this one twice. Still, he can’t do much more than skim it. His eyes slide over the pages like they’re made of glass, and none of the words give him enough of a foothold to keep from slipping.

He’ll wait for Reiner outside, then, in the back. The lantern isn’t strong, but it’s enough to see Reiner when he’s about ten meters away, flushed and grinning. And he doesn’t need any help hearing what Reiner says: “Take care, you hear me?”

“Commander Shadis is going to hear you,” Berthold says.

“Huh? --oh, sorry, didn’t think you’d be waiting out here.” Reiner crouches, settles his elbows on his knees. Berthold remembers a different crouch, Reiner’s head lowered and one knee touching the ground, every plane of his body taut and seething and ready. This -- he doesn’t know what to call this.

“I didn’t keep you waiting too long, did I?” Reiner continues.

“No.”

“Right.” Reiner looks like he’s on the verge of saying more, but clears his throat instead and takes a seat next to Berthold on the steps. Insects chitter in the dirt under Berthold’s feet, and he crushes one with his heel. They quiet down after that. The air’s still enough that he hears the lantern’s flame hiss, if he concentrates. Reiner’s breath is softer than normal, like he’s holding part of it back.

It’s not Berthold’s place to ask where he was, so Berthold doesn’t.

Reiner tells him anyway, after at least a third of the oil left in the lantern burns up. “So Krista and I were walking around.”

Berthold nods.

“And -- hey, can I ask you something?”

“All right.”

Reiner scratches the back of his head. It’s a clumsier gesture than Berthold’s used to seeing from him, jerky and uncertain. “Do you think Krista would want to go somewhere with me? Not that there’s anywhere to go around here, but we’re heading into town in a month, and maybe then...” He trails off, and gives Berthold a sheepish grin, as if to say _you know the rest_.

He’s wrong. There’s a sharp taste at the back of Berthold’s mouth, more sour than blood. Swallowing doesn’t wash it away.

“Something _is_ wrong,” Reiner says, reaching for Berthold’s shoulder, and Berthold moves almost as fast as he does in the three-dimensional maneuver gear to get away from it.

“I don’t really know what she’d say,” he says. “You should ask her, not me.”

“I just thought I’d run it by you, that’s all.”

“It doesn’t matter. You’ll do what you want anyway.”

Reiner frowns. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“I meant what I said. That’s all.”

“Berthold.” Reiner gets to his feet. He’s slow about it, too slow. “C’mon. Don’t do this.”

A moth flutters closer to the lantern, lands where Berthold was sitting and folds its wings in. Berthold crushes it, too. “I’m not doing anything. I’m certainly not doing anything I shouldn’t be doing. No,” he corrects, his voice thinning, “I’m out of bed after curfew, and so are you, we should head back inside -- ”

“If you’ve got something on your mind, tell me!”

“It really doesn’t matter what I say,” Berthold snaps, and after that, the only sound is his teeth grinding.

“Of course it does! We’re friends, right?”

The words knock whatever Berthold was about to say out of his mouth. He stands there, gaping, jaw shaking. 

_No one’s watching_ , he should tell him. _You don’t have to pretend_. He doesn’t have to laugh the loudest at anyone’s jokes, or let the bruises and scrapes from training stay on his body, or -- or wander around in the woods with a girl he could rip to pieces at his real size. 

“Shit,” he hears Reiner say. “Look, can you tell me what I said?”

“We’re not friends,” he says. He should bring himself to look Reiner in the face. Instead, he studies the ground, what little of it he can see beyond the lantern’s glow. “We’re warriors.”

Somewhere behind him, wood groans and resettles.

“Yeah.” Reiner’s voice is softer, lower. “I know.”

“Do you.”

“Yeah.”

When Berthold turns to him again, Reiner’s gaze sharpens. He leans forward, the heel of his hand braced on the step, ready to push himself off if he needs to. 

It looks right. Still, Berthold hesitates. “And -- about Krista -- ”

“Hm? Oh. Right.” Reiner’s jaw tightens. “No, I don’t need to go that far.”

The sweat on Berthold’s palms gets cold. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t need to spend any extra time in town with her. It’d confuse things.”

“Why?” Berthold says; it almost slips out. His cheeks are hot again, as hot as they were earlier this evening. “Why does it need to be confusing at all?”

Reiner sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose, and says nothing.

Berthold lowers his voice to an almost-whisper. “You know why we’re here.” _Don’t you_? he almost adds, but maybe it’s better if that isn’t a question.

“Already said ‘I know,’ didn’t I?”

“Yes, but...” He hesitates, scratches the back of his hand. “Why Krista, Reiner? Why her?”

A muscle on the side of Reiner’s neck twitches, and the slope of his shoulders looks wrong again, hunched and closed-in. “She’s a nice girl,” he says. “Kind. Normal. I guess that must be it.”

“You guess that must be it,” Berthold repeats, and chokes back something that’s swelling in his throat. 

“That’s what I just -- listen, I don’t know how I’m supposed to describe it.” Reiner’s fingers cover most of his eyes; only a sliver of his iris peeks out, and it’s not enough to tell Berthold anything. Nothing about this tells Berthold anything. “I know we took a walk together, I know what we said, but I can’t -- I don’t know what it felt like.”

Berthold stops holding his breath long enough to say, “Then maybe it didn’t feel like anything at all.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“You don’t need to pretend like it did.” He should sit down next to Reiner now, rest his chin on Reiner’s shoulder, cover Reiner’s hand with his own and peel it back from his face. He stays standing. “Not with me...”

Reiner doesn’t even try to smile. If he had, it would have unsettled Berthold more, but Reiner not smiling doesn’t make any of the tightness in Berthold’s stomach go away. “That’d be pretty stupid, wouldn’t it? Something normal -- that’s not for guys like us.”

Now Berthold does sit, because Reiner’s immobile as stone. There was a time when he spent so much of his downtime like this, when no one except Berthold was watching. But it’s been years since then. “Normal?”

“Yeah. Normal. Most guys find a woman, settle down, get a house, start a family. You’ve seen it.”

“Why would you want that?”

“I don’t,” Reiner says, too quickly.

Berthold’s mouth is shaking again. He covers it with his hand. That just makes his hand shake, too. _Let it go_ , he tells himself, _Reiner said that isn’t what he wants. Don’t ask anything else. You don’t need to ask anything else_. 

“That’s good,” he finally manages to say, even if his teeth chatter around the words. “Because you’re right. We won’t have that.”

Reiner pulls his hands down, and his expression makes something deep in Berthold’s chest ache. “Hey, I got you, right?”

It would be so easy to say _yes_ , to lean in and stroke his jaw and kiss him and let Reiner lead that kiss wherever it wants to go. They can have that. They _will_ have that. That can be enough.

But slowly, Berthold drags himself to his feet instead.

“We really should go inside,” he says. “Even we need to rest.”

“Berthold,” Reiner begins, but Berthold’s back is already turned. He’s already shouldering open the door, finding his way back to his bunk in the dark. The ladder creaks under his hands, and one of the boys across the way gives a loud snort.

“‘Zat you, Reiner?” Connie asks, his voice muffled.

“No, it’s me.”

“Mph. Where’s Reiner?”

Berthold says, quite honestly, “I don’t know.”

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by an excellent post on tumblr that I sadly seem to have lost the link to, which speculated a little about Reiner's line to Ymir about not being interested in women versus his "just marry me already" thoughts regarding Krista, and had some great things to say about heteronormativity and wanting desperately to fit in. Thus the fic.


End file.
